Aubrey Plaza's 'Ingrid Goes West' Is the Only Movie About Instagram You Need to See

In the future, every social media app will get the movie it deserves. Alongside cultural objects clearly made for children like The Emoji Movie, picture the marquee of a futuristic movie theater resembling the glowing surface of a smartphone: an Uber road trip film, a Spotify music-biz melodrama, or a Twitter-based psychological thriller. Ingrid Goes West, a droll dark comedy about alienation and obsession, will likely be referred to as "the Instagram movie" for the way it examines the social effects and skewers the aesthetics of the popular photo app. Think of it as a beta test of what's to come.

If the tech-inspired entertainment of next few decades is as clever and fun as Ingrid Goes West, we're in good hands. Aubrey Plaza stars in the movie as Ingrid, a young outcast who lives with her sick mother in Pennsylvania and spends her days scrolling through the feeds of her seemingly happier peers. She lusts after their perfectly framed breakfast portraits, yearns for their artfully composed selfies, and craves their cheery #squadgoals shots. It's clear her social media addiction has a violent edge. The film opens with her spraying mace in the face of a young bride who didn't invite her to a wedding. FoMO kills.

After her mother dies, leaving Ingrid with a plump inheritance, she heads west, as the title promises, where she meets an Instagram-famous L.A.-based influencer named Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen). Quickly, Taylor, whose name may or may not remind you of a certain pop blonde pop star, becomes Ingrid's latest object of obsession. We watch as Ingrid burrows her way into Taylor's life, first by frequenting her favorite avocado-toast-serving establishment, and later by kidnapping the dog she keeps with her doofy artist husband Ezra (a funny Wyatt Russell). Soon enough, Ingrid and Taylor are pals. Besties, even.

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The stalker plot of Ingrid Goes West is hardly new -- the script even references Single White Female at one point -- but the novelty comes from observing the ways director Matt Spicer and his co-writer David Branson Smith trick out their script with cannily chosen elements of young, wealthy Los Angeles life. These characters know how to stage the perfect "casual" snapshot. They can tell you which farmer's market isn't too crowded. They go to all the best gallery openings.

Some of the tropes are classics. For example, the movie effectively mocks the way rich people like Taylor often have irritating siblings who they talk up to all their friends and acquaintances. Her brother, a preening idiot played by Billy Magnussen, is like a character plucked from a Bret Easton Ellis novel. He wouldn't look out of place in an '80s movie, which the movie's retro-chic poster cheekily acknowledges.

The real joy of the film is found in the specific details: the Joan Didion book Ingrid dutifully pages through, the awful conceptual art Ezra makes, and the banality of Taylor's dream to open an IRL version of her carefully curated Instagram. Even Dan, Ingrid's landlord and perhaps the movie's only redeemable character (played by Straight Outta Compton's O'Shea Jackson Jr.), is defined by his obsession with the '90s-kid artifact Batman Forever. (The fact that writers chose the Val Kilmer-fronted Forever and not the more widely mocked Batman and Robin is telling.) According to an interview with the film's costume designer Natalie O’Brien, the items worn by the actors were inspired by style icons like Aimee Song, Chiara Ferragni, and Tavi Gevinson.

Unsurprisingly, actual Instagram influencers have been recruited by media outlets to comment on the film, producing content that websites likely hope they will share as well. Many of them seem to dig it, likely enjoying it in the same way Silicon Valley CEO's celebrate the HBO series that playfully mocks them. "From what they showed in the movie I definitely thought Taylor’s feed was curated well," one Instagrammer told The Cut. Another found the movie so powerful she didn't even want to open her phone afterwards. But some have notes.

"I think the producers should have had a few influencers behind the scenes because I laughed at some of the things," said fashion blogger Rosa Crespo in an interview with Cosmopolitan. "I was like, 'I would never post this.' It was kind of lame. 'The couple that yogas together stays together.' Maybe in 2011. But not in 2017. You could tell they didn’t know the industry well."

The influencer's comment might sound silly but it acknowledges a truth: Ingrid Goes West was not made for the trendsetters, tastemakers, and insiders who have bought into Instagram as a way of life. Like David Fincher's The Social Network, it's a movie that looks at its subject from a distance, casting a harsh eye on its characters' choices and never allowing them to escape the digital prisons they've built for themselves. Even if the details are askew and presented from an arch comedic angle, it's rare to see a contemporary movie so fully engage with the mundane ways technology affects behavior. Millions of people spend hours and hours staring at their phones everyday, so it only makes sense that Hollywood would produce movies that reflects that truth.

At the same time, even Ingrid Goes West can't resist putting a filter on its representation of addiction. Though the visual palette of the film mimics the sun-kissed glow of a perfectly captioned Instagram photo, the ending, which feels like a cynical poke in the eye, refuses to go along with Instagram's cheery aspirational tone. But it also doesn't gut you. It could've been bleaker. Instead of truly diving into the abyss, it pivots to greener pastures.

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